Scientists from the Space Research Centre are working with an art historian to reveal secrets of the Tudor Reformation

Cutting-edge space science technology of the sort used to analyse moon rock is being applied to fragments of 16th-century tombs. Scientists from the Space Research Centre in Leicester are working with an art historian from the nearby university as well as academics from Oxford and Yale in a three-year project that hopes to shed new light on our understanding of the Tudor Reformation.

The tombs, at the parish church in Framlingham, are close to the family seat of the Howards, the extremely wealthy and powerful Dukes of Norfolk. But they were originally sited 40 miles away at Thetford Priory, traditional resting place of the Howards until Henry VIII had it dissolved in 1539. They were moved and reassembled some time in the 1540s while the third duke languished in the Tower of London. (Henry was becoming increasingly paranoid about the threat that he posed to his infant heir.) The reassembly process was flawed, however. Some different materials were used.

What appear to be fragments of the original tombs were unearthed at Thetford by archaeologists as long ago as 1934. But they languished in a warehouse for decades and came to light only recently, when Dr Simon Thurley took over as chief executive of English Heritage and asked all curators to find out what they had in store.

Leicester University art historian Dr Phillip Lindley was called in to investigate the fragments and was immediately fascinated – not just by the quality of the artwork by French sculptors, but also by the possibilities that arose of re-thinking parts of Tudor history. "We're trying to relate what happened to the monuments to what happened to the number one power family of the day," he says....

We try and maintain a laserlike focus on the future at Wired, but sometimes it's worth taking a look back at the innovations of the past. On August 16, 1858, the first message was sent across the Atlantic by telegraph cable, reading "Glory to God in the highest; on earth, peace and good will toward men". The transmission marked the culmination of 19 years of dreams, plans and hard work, bridging the economic and political systems of both the UK and the USA.

The idea of a transatlantic communications cable was first floated in 1839, following the introduction of the working telegraph by Wiliam Cooke and Charles Wheatstone. Samuel Morse, the inventor of Morse code, threw his weight behind it in 1840, and by 1850, a link had been laid between Britain and France. The same year, construction began on a telegraph line up the far north-east coast of North America -- from Nova Scotia to the very tip of Newfoundland.

The team behind the east-coast cable was led by Frederick Newton Gisborne, a telegraph engineer from Lancashire, who lived in Nova Scotia. However, the line didn't prove too lucrative, and in 1853 the company collapsed. His fortunes changed, however, when he was introduced to Cyrus West Field, a businessman and financier from New York City....

ARLINGTON, Va. – The Pentagon likes to put up huge commemorative posters and placards reminding Defense Department employees to celebrate things like Black History Month, Asian-American Diversity Week, even Holocaust Remembrance Day – pretty much name it, and they’ve got a sign for it.

Not appearing on any Pentagon hallway: a call to remember the 50th anniversary of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell speech, warning of the “military-industrial complex.”

The poster makers missed an opportunity. The buzzword around Secretary of Defense Robert Gates heading into 2011, his last year of service, is “efficiencies.” That is, Gates has ordered everyone to save money across the DOD and service branches by cutting or stopping programs, reducing the numbers of four-star generals, and eliminating thousands of contractors.

Just don’t call them defense “cuts,” Pentagon press staff constantly reminds reporters, because those DOD offices are planning to reinvest whatever savings they found back into their own budget. It’s complicated, so read about it here....

For the past two days, a sign on the cafeteria door at Hammond School read, “Jews and dogs not allowed.”

The sign was part of the sixth-grade’s simulation of 1930s Germany in which students were divided into two groups – Nazis and Jews.

The students portraying Nazis spent a day as a privileged class, sitting in front rows, serving as teachers’ pets and being told they were smart. Meanwhile, the students who portrayed Jews ate in silence in the hallways, sat on the floor in the backs of classrooms and wore stars pinned to their shirts, said Karen Shull, the sixth-grade English teacher who created the simulation.

Such simulations are performed in schools across the country as a way of teaching that prejudice can be casual and easy to adopt. While Hammond’s program is highly structured and appears to generate little criticism, education experts say similar simulations have gotten out of hand and been harmful to students. They urge schools to proceed with caution when planning them.

The simulation has brought some Hammond students to tears as they grow frustrated with their second-class status, Shull said. After spending Wednesday in their assigned roles, the students switched places Thursday, allowing everyone a chance to experience both sides of the history lesson, Shull said.

“The students in the first group were pretty downtrodden,” she said. “Then their talk changed. It’s very interesting to see how quickly they switch roles. I’ve had several say, ‘I’m so glad I’m German today.’”...

Super Mom ruled the '80s. She was to motherhood what the Virginia Slims chick was to cigarettes. She could do it all, be it all and have it all, all at the same time. She retired at the end of the decade, weary, exhausted, suffering from water retention and plantar fasciitis from spiked heels.

Soccer Mom ruled the '90s. She lived in the 'burbs, drove the kids to games in a minivan, had a lawn chair permanently stashed in the cargo hold, took snacks for the team, told her littlest one that the score didn't matter (everyone is a winner!) and voted for political candidates she thought looked sexy.

Soccer Mom was run out of town by Helicopter Mom. She has only two lives to live - her life and the life of her child. Helicopter Mom means business; she flies an AH-64 Apache, constantly hovering. "Call me when you get there! Call me when you leave! Do you need new underwear?" She keeps a close eye on academics, is in frequent touch with the teacher, the teacher's aide, the custodian, the cafeteria ladies, the principal, the school board and the superintendent....

Over at Esquire former Bush speechwriter David Frum has a sensible suggestion for President Obama: create an infrastructure bank to select and pay for transportation projects on the basis of merit instead of allowing meddlesome congressional earmarking. This would, theoretically, protect the obvious need for economically stimulative infrastructure investment from conservative complaints about wasteful, politically motivated spending. “I'd suggest we have seven directors of the bank,” writes Frum. “Three would be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.”

As anyone who has followed the various political dramas involving presidential on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, or, for that matter, the Supreme Court can tell you, presidential appointees are not immune from making politically motivated decisions, much less accusations of doing so....

'Sometimes I sarcastically, perhaps cynically, say that I'm glad that I received virtually all of my education before it became fashionable for white people to like black people," writes Walter Williams in his new autobiography, "Up from the Projects." "By that I mean that I encountered back then a more honest assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Professors didn't hesitate to criticize me—sometimes to the point of saying, 'That's nonsense.'"

Mr. Williams, an economist at George Mason University, is contrasting being black and poor in the 1940s and '50s with today's experience. It's a theme that permeates his short, bracing volume of reminiscence, and it's where we began our conversation on a recent morning at his home in suburban Philadelphia.

"We lived in the Richard Allen housing projects" in Philadelphia, says Mr. Williams. "My father deserted us when I was three and my sister was two. But we were the only kids who didn't have a mother and father in the house. These were poor black people and a few whites living in a housing project, and it was unusual not to have a mother and father in the house. Today, in the same projects, it would be rare to have a mother and father in the house."

Even in the antebellum era, when slaves often weren't permitted to wed, most black children lived with a biological mother and father. During Reconstruction and up until the 1940s, 75% to 85% of black children lived in two-parent families. Today, more than 70% of black children are born to single women. "The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn't do, what Jim Crow couldn't do, what the harshest racism couldn't do," Mr. Williams says. "And that is to destroy the black family."...

WASHINGTON — Stacked in a vault at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Dorchester, individually sealed and labeled, are 54 crates of records so closely guarded that even the library director is prohibited from taking a peek.

And yet, archivists contend, the trove contains some of the most important records of Cold War history: diaries, notes, phone logs, messages, trip files, and other documents from Robert F. Kennedy’s service as US attorney general, including details about his roles in the Cuban missile crisis and as coordinator of covert efforts to overthrow or assassinate Fidel Castro.

A half-century after those critical events, a behind-the-scenes tussle continues over the Kennedy family’s refusal to grant permission for researchers to freely review them. The disagreement lingers even as the JFK Library this month celebrated the 50th anniversary of John Kennedy’s inauguration by providing “unprecedented’’ access to thousands of records of his presidency.

“The RFK papers are among the most valuable, untapped archival resources of foreign policy and domestic history left to be excavated,’’ said Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at George Washington University’s National Security Archive, who has been rebuffed several times in his attempts to gain access to the papers.

“This history is immediately relevant to the ongoing debate over US policy toward Cuba,’’ he added. “I look forward to the day — hopefully sooner than later — that access to the RFK papers contributes to advancing that debate.’’...

Palestinian negotiators secretly agreed to allow Israel to annex all but one of the settlements built in occupied East Jerusalem in the most far-reaching concessions ever made over the bitterly contested city. The offer was turned down by Israel's then foreign minister as inadequate.

Palestinian Authority leaders also privately discussed giving up part of the flashpoint Arab neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, according to leaked documents. And they proposed a joint committee to take over the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount holy sites in the Old City of Jerusalem – the highly sensitive issue that, along with refugee rights, sank the Camp David talks in 2000 and triggered the second Palestinian intifada.

The unprecedented offer on the East Jerusalem settlements, made in May 2008, is revealed in confidential Palestinian records of negotiations with Israel in the year before the Gaza war of 2008-09....

NEW YORK — For more than a century, tens of thousands worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, building some of the nation's most storied warships — sailing frigates, Civil War ironclads, gunboats, sloops and 20th-century warships and submarines. The yard's sprawling hospital treated soldiers from the 1860s through World War II.

Now, more than four decades after the largest-scale shutdown of any military facility in U.S. history, the Navy Yard is coming to life again.

Today, the 300-acre facility hums as a vibrant industrial park with the Steiner Studios, the largest film and television complex outside Hollywood, and hundreds of other businesses. A $25.5 million museum and visitor's center under construction will highlight the shipyard's 210-year history with blueprints, maps, photos and vintage tools.

The navy yard once boasted its own power plant and radio station, more than 300 buildings and six dry docks where more than 160 ships were built, spanning 15 conflicts from the War of 1812 to the first Gulf War....

Almost all families have complaints about a crazy relative, but William Patrick Hitler had more to talk about than most.

"It is quite possible," he said in 1940, that his Uncle Adolf, the fuhrer -- or leader -- of Germany, was no longer sane.

"There is a thin line between genius and insanity," William Patrick said in an interview with a Pittsburgh Press reporter. "And it is quite possible that sometime in 1938, Hitler completely lost his perspective and overstepped that line."

William Patrick visited Pittsburgh in March 1940 as the main speaker for the annual dinner of the Young Men's and Women's Hebrew Association of Pittsburgh.

He was the British-born son of Adolf Hitler's older half-brother, Alois. His father had left Germany for Ireland, where he met a woman named Bridget Dowling. The couple eloped to Liverpool, England, where William Patrick was born in 1911. Alois left his family and returned to Germany in 1914 just before World War I broke out....

Can we be sure which mummy was the daddy? When a state-of-the-art DNA analysis of Tutankhamun and other ancient Egyptian royals was published last year, its authors hailed it as "the final word" on the pharaoh's family tree. But others are now voicing doubts.

The analysis of 11 royal mummies dating from around 1300 BC was carried out by an Egyptian team led by Egypt's chief archaeologist Zahi Hawass. The project was overseen by two foreign consultants, Albert Zink of the EURAC Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy, and Carsten Pusch of the University of Tübingen, Germany.

The researchers used the DNA data to construct a family tree of Tutankhamun and his immediate relatives. The study, published last February in the Journal of the American Medical Association (vol 303, p 638), concluded that Tutankhamun's father was the pharaoh Akhenaten, that his parents were brother and sister, and that two mummified foetuses found in Tutankhamun's tomb were probably his stillborn daughters – conclusions that have since become received wisdom....

Here at home and abroad, people are also mourning the death of World War II Veteran Barney Hajiro -- a decorated war hero who was America's oldest living medal of honor recipient.

Private Hajiro died early yesterday morning at the Maunalani nursing home at the age of 94.

His son, Glenn remembers his father as a shy person who never wanted recognition for serving his country.

In 2000, President Clinton awarded Barney Hajiro with the military's highest award, the medal of honor.

"I don't care about the medal you know I just want to come home in one piece with the boys yeah," says Barney Hajiro, in an interview in May 2001.

Glenn Hajiro says his father was a humble person.

So humble that his father never talked about his war experiences.

"Never knew he never talked about the war, he was shy, but he was proud of what he did" says Hajiro....

King Tutankhamun’s tomb will not be closed in the near future, Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, told Discovery News.

Many reports in the past two weeks announced the closure of this tourist magnet by the end of this year.

Although suffering from the wear and tear caused by hordes of sweaty visitors drawn in by the elaborate murals and the boy king’s mummy, which is kept in a climate-controlled glass case, the burial won’t close its doors so soon.

“Tutankhamun’s tomb will not be closed in the near future. It is a long-term plan that has not been decided upon yet,” Hawass told Discovery News.

The long term plan involves a $10 million project called the “Valley of the Replicas.”

Visitors will be directed to exact reproductions of the original tombs. The first three replicas will be the tombs of Tutankhamun, and the already closed burials of Seti I and Queen Nefertari in the Valley of the Queens.

The three original tombs will remain open to tourists willing to pay very hefty fee, perhaps as high as $8,500 per visit....

Jewish organizations have come together in a project to identify and commemorate those buried in Holocaust mass graves across Eastern Europe. Germany's Foreign Ministry has donated 300,000 euros to the project.


International Jewish organizations have come together in an effort to commemorate hundreds of thousands of unnamed Holocaust victims.

Meeting in Berlin on Friday, the organizations announced that they have begun to identify, protect and memorialize thousands of forgotten Holocaust mass graves across Eastern Europe.

The German foreign ministry has pledged 300,000 euros ($408,000) to fund the project over the coming months.

Joint project

The initiative is coordinated by the Berlin office of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in collaboration with the Central Council of Jews in Germany and the German War Graves Commission. They will oversee work by dozens of groups on the ground in Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Poland....